The first execution by electric chair
An electric chair is a device used to execute an individual by electrocution.
When used, the condemned person is strapped to a specially-built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes fastened on the head and leg.
This execution method, conceived in 1881 by a Buffalo, New York dentist named Alfred P.
Southwick, was developed throughout the 1880s as a supposed humane alternative to hanging, and first used in 1890.
The electric chair has been used in the United States and, for several decades, in the Philippines.
While death was originally theorized to result from damage to the brain, it was shown in 1899 that it primarily results from ventricular fibrillation and eventual cardiac arrest.
Although the electric chair has long been a symbol of the death penalty in the United States, its use is in decline due to the rise of lethal injection, which is widely believed to be a more humane method of execution
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